Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.

American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.

Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.